6/1/2015--The Counted: People killed by police in the US, During 2015 = 470

Posted by Zenphamy 9 years, 11 months ago to Government
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The Guardian has compiled a unique and detailed, searchable, and interactive database and presentation of Americans killed by Police this year (470 through 6/1). There are other sites that are out there gathering information from citizen volunteers, but this one by The Guardian offers more detail and info in one place than any other I’ve seen. For those interested from either side of the issue, I highly recommend checking it out.

Needless to say, since my last post on this topic, America’s police have maintained their nearly 4/day kill rates and for the most part, their DA’s have continued justifying and protecting them from the consequences.

I reviewed one in particular from Salt Lake City last year, just today that is horrifying to watch from the Officer’s body camera. The complete video/audio was just released to the public. You can view it at : http://thefreethoughtproject.com/graphic...

As I viewed this shooting, the first thing that came to mind was the revelation of the 'No More Hesitation Target' story from last year about shooting range targets designed to remove any hesitation in real life street encounters between police and citizens that included pregnant women, mother with child, grade school age children, the elderly, etc. One story can be reviewed at Reason Magazine: http://reason.com/blog/2013/02/25/law-en...

From the article:
“According to a statement the company sent Reason last week, members of the law enforcement community inspired Law Enforcement Targets Inc. to design the "No More Hesitation" series in the first place:
The subjects in NMH targets were chosen in order to give officers the experience of dealing with deadly force shooting scenarios with subjects that are not the norm during training. I found while speaking with officers and trainers in the law enforcement community that there is a hesitation on the part of cops when deadly force is required on subjects with atypical age, frailty or condition (one officer explaining that he enlarged photos of his own kids to use as targets so that he would not be caught off guard with such a drastically new experience while on duty). This hesitation time may be only seconds but that is not acceptable when officers are losing their lives in these same situations. The goal of NMH is to break that stereotype on the range, regardless of how slim the chances are of encountering a real life scenario that involves a child, pregnant woman, etc. If that initial hesitation time can be cut down due to range experience, the officer and community are better served.”

From my memory of the stories about the targets and their use, what I don’t remember reading was how long Police Depts. had been training their officers at shooting ranges in this ‘No More Hesitation Shooting’, or what DHS did with the $2,000,000 worth of those targets that they had already ordered And I don’t doubt that training has a great deal to do with the number and types of un-armed shootings we’re seeing.

From the SLC shooting linked above, I have no doubt that Officer had passed his ‘No More Hesitation’ training class with an A+.

Let me repeat one sentence from the article above: "one officer explaining that he enlarged photos of his own kids to use as targets so that he would not be caught off guard with such a drastically new experience while on duty."


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  • Posted by khalling 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I remember one conversation I had with a young SWAT officer. they were brought in to apprehend an escapee from another state who was sighted in our state on a road near where I lived. they decided to take him down at a very busy intersection. multi-car pile up, many injuries, but they got their man. he was all excited and gleeful as he related the incident. I calmly asked about the injured bystanders. he never once mentioned that safety of citizens was his number one objective. It was to apprehend the suspect. apparently at any cost. the last is my opinion
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  • Posted by Riftsrunner 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    While I agree that police are performing properly, that doesn't make them your friends. They are trained to illicit information from you to get you to implicate yourself in an investigation. Unless you call them, you should exercise your constitutional rights in any situation that brings you into contact with them. Even something you feel is minor that you say, could unintentionally get yourself into some grief as you don't know what crimes are being investigated. I am not anti-cop, I just want to make sure that the cops are doing their job if they want to arrest me. I am not going to do it for them. (Read Ferris' statement to Hank Rearden concerning crime in society in AS. "Governments have no way to control innocent people, so it passes laws to make everyone a criminal and let's their guilt do the rest).
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  • Posted by hattrup 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I have a first hand account also of law enforcement applicant in S. California being rejected during interview for lack of hand-to-hand fighting interest/experience.
    It seems to me that bullies are attracted to the police profession, and the recruited process likely encourages this - instead of watching out for it.
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  • Posted by $ Your_Name_Goes_Here 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I wholeheartedly agree. We may have arguments over how police are being militarized, but the focus on Police = Evil is unfounded for the vast majority of cases. Remember the sweet little kid, Michael Brown? Well, we later heard what Paul Harvey would call "the rest of the story". He was a thug, he resisted arrest and went for an officer's weapon. Clearly not a smart move, and he paid the price for it.
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  • -1
    Posted by woodlema 9 years, 11 months ago
    Yes and the number of people killed by medical malpractice, and I mean gross negligence was over 99,000.

    I wrote a LOT on this that when you take into account the total number of "OFFICIAL" Police interactions across the country, and look at the total killed by cops, and look at the total number if Civil Rights Violations that were "claimed" Cops, using Six Sigma Metrics are 99.997% perfect, under fire at times, at risk for their life on every call..

    Like it or not those are the numbers. My Burger King Whopper I might see 90% accurate....and when you look at Deaths by hospital/doctor, you get something that would terrify you.
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  • Posted by DrZarkov99 9 years, 11 months ago
    The best counter to the adversarial cop vs community situation is to create more interaction and opportunity for personal contact. Something as simple as waving to the cop in the cruiser who passes helps develop empathy. Community support for fallen or injured officers, including funeral attendance or creating funds to help families of those officers help as well. Police respond particularly well to support of their K-9 members, as they're as prone to affection for their dogs just like the rest of us.

    Viewing law enforcement as the enemy is counterproductive. We create enemies by allowing distance between us and them, and making sure that distance is kept narrow is the best defense against a trigger-happy police force.
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  • Posted by Esceptico 9 years, 11 months ago
    A quick Google search to compare life insurance rates for police officers and truck drivers finds the truck drivers have a higher risk and pay more. So much for the police putting their lives on the line every day writing traffice tickets or invading (110+ invasions per day in US) homes for victimless crimes.
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 9 years, 11 months ago
    In that video, the suspect looked like he was going for a gun. Idiots who do not simply raise their hands while a cop aims a gun at them are asking for it.
    If I were that cop, I'd likely have shot the man too out of sheer fear of my life.
    Now retired from the Alabama Department,of Corrections, I was annually trained to shoot a revolver, a shotgun and an AR-15.
    I was also trained to shoot (to stop by aiming at upper torso center mass) a convicted felon for simply running away, such as one taken to the hospital or to court.
    I also recall being trained by the Marines to fire a ,45 way long ago. I had to yell "Halt!" twice at a target that was rolling away before I holed it with 7 shots!
    Fortunately, I never had to shoot anyone, though I fired a total of three warning shots within 21 years with the DOC.
    After my last career shot stopped a runner, I had a dude aimed in with "shoot to stop" heart shot as he raised his hands. "Hands up--don't shoot."
    Al Sharpton would have approved. Naw, the inmate was white. He would not have cared.
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  • Posted by XenokRoy 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Livestock is eaten, not the comparison I would use but I agree with the concept :)

    We are more like the slaves. Used to produce for the master. Used to create crisis that the master can use to their perceived betterment. For the few of us that have the brains to attempt not to be slaves tools such as the useful idiots, IRS, Osha and other government organizations can be employed to break us through some perceived civil process that is not really civil at all.
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  • Posted by XenokRoy 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Murder is often justified, even when the law does not recognize it.

    I have a friend who was a member of the swat team for 20 years that went after escaped convicts. He would often say the nicest people in prison are the murderers. Why? many of them are no threat to anyone.

    They walked in on there wife with another man and killed that man.

    They had some guy stocking their 15 year old girl after attempting rape once and the dad took care of the problem and is now in Jail.

    The first of those to cases I would like to think I would just kick them both out, but I could kill for that if I did not keep myself in check. It would be much like Hank, a great victory to let that guy and my wife leave the room alive.

    The second I would do, without hesitation and if needed go to Jail for it. A scumbag would be gone and my daughter would be safe. It would be justified and right regardless of how the courts see it.

    I do not know enough about that Utah case to really state one way or the other, but until I research it myself I will not judge one way or the other.
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  • Posted by XenokRoy 9 years, 11 months ago
    My question would be how many police have been killed by people?

    I am not sure the anti-cop position is justified. I am sure it is in some cases, but most I think are not.

    We live in a world that has people attempting to get us to kill and other to create a crisis and then take advantage of it. In most cases the cops are also victimized by the elite who are looking for a way to gain greater power and use reports just like this one to create a stir and and with it the crisis they need to move forward.

    Do not get me wrong the article is interesting but to me it does not tell the whole story just an element of something I think is much larger.
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  • Posted by wiggys 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    You ask "what is the US becoming/" A third world country or is it now? my opinion yes!

    If all of the police officers were from prior military service specifically those who served in combat were allowed to apply for jobs as police officers we would see a different personality of man working at the job. Most were never in the military so they have this superiority complex and with a gun in hand they believe they are god. They just want to kill someone. The beginning of the end result is what we are seeing such as in Utah. I would not be surprised to learn that they are trained to shoot first and go on, not even ask questions. I maintain it all comes down to the fact that we have a population that is just plain dumb. Yes Khalling what you are seeing (A=A) is what we have become, it is our reality.
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  • Posted by tdechaine 9 years, 11 months ago
    Before being anti-cop, you might want to put yourself in their position; and you might want to focus on the attitude and actions of those who force cops to take such actions. Except for the small number of bad cops that need to be removed, our police force is performing properly.
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 9 years, 11 months ago in reply to this comment.
    That's funny. Want to REALLY piss people off? Get one that says, "All lives matter."
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 9 years, 11 months ago
    Over 100,000 will be killed this year, willingly, by their doctors prescribing drugs to them. By "willingly" I mean the medical system expects that many to die from known drug reactions and has, essentially, actuaried (not a word?), that into the business. I think the last annual number I saw was a few years back and it was 108,000 killed. My own dad almost became such a statistic a few months ago. I had to tell his doctor to back off. The doctor actually admitted that I was right. (amazingly)

    My point is that we're really just livestock to the system. To see the farm is to leave it...
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  • Posted by khalling 9 years, 11 months ago
    From the Utah shooting it states the murder was justified by the judge in the case. What is the US becoming?
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  • Posted by khalling 9 years, 11 months ago
    The Reason article is particularly interesting. I have conjectured for some time that desensitization was a large part of ongoing law enforcement training.
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  • Posted by SaltyDog 9 years, 11 months ago
    Interesting analysis! Good find, Zen.

    Does this now mean that we should all go out and get tee shirts that say, "White Lives Matter"?
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